March brings memories of mom

By Alonzo Weston

March has and always will remind me of my mother. Florestrine Turner was born on March 5, 1938, and died last year on March 21. In between those dates, she lived a good life.

Mom, Tisie as she was called since childhood, touched many more people in her job as a Katz drugstore cashier. She followed in my grandmother, Lena Weston’s, footsteps there where she worked as a short-order cook.

Mama Lena, as we grandkids called her, bought her own house on those short-order cook wages. Her pay was supplemented by frying chicken at the East Side Cafe on weekend nights.

Mom, a woman small in stature with a lilting singsong voice, had a way with people that made them feel good, good enough to wait in her cashier line no matter how long it was. A line could be open next to hers and people would still crowd into her line. She just had a way of making people feel special.

Mom married her childhood sweetheart, my stepdad Henry Turner Sr., whom everyone just called Tootlebug.

It always filled me with joy when I’d see them in dad’s green Ford pickup going to a car show somewhere. Dad loved his cars and had a dozen of them. Mom was always with him when he went to show them off.

I learned long ago to never take small things for granted. It’s those memories of my mom and dad and Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with the yard full of Christmas decorations at their home. It’s those memories that carry me through when things get rough and the nights get cold.

My mother was a small woman but strong, living in the rough parts of Kansas City, Kansas, when married to my abusive first stepdad. She was a survivor. She raised me as such. She was sweet but strict.

I recall the time I snuck out of the house late one night to hang with my friends. I figured if I walked and didn’t take my car she would stay sound asleep and not suspect anything. Soon as I got to our stoop, a friend called out “Alonzo is that your car?” and sure enough it was with my mom at the wheel telling me “Boy, get your behind in this car!”

Whatever good you see in me today I can honestly say comes from the Lord and that woman I called mom. I miss her daily.